Today is Flash's 10th birthday! From 1996's FutureSplash Animator to today's Flash 8...we've come a long way baby! It's been a great ride and there's no end in sight!
So sit down and make a simple timeline animation, make a button that starts and stops your movie, make a shape tween, add a sound effect, get in touch with your inner Flasher and remember the first time you started Flash up. And if you want to celebrate Flash with some other folks, then check out an Adobe User Group in your area for the August meeting. Many groups are having a Flash-themed meeting this month. Get out and join the community!
On a separate note: Weblogsinc, the owner of FlashInsider, has decided to discontinue publishing FlashInsider (there will be an official note tomorrow sometime). The site will remain here as an archive, but no new content will be added. So this will be my final post here, and I just wanted to personally say thank you to all of you for reading. I appreciate your support over the last year or so. Hope to see you all at MAX!
Registration for Adobe MAX 2006 opens today. This is the first post-merger MAX, so it should be a doozy!
They've also posted an agenda for the conference. Register today! and I'll see you all in Vegas! Registration Info (including pricing) Direct link to the Registration Form
Yikes! Don't know what to make of this so soon after the merger but...
According to an Adobe press release dated yesterday, 15 June, Stephen Elop, former CEO of Macromedia and current President of Worldwide Field Operations, has resigned. There isn't really any more information than that except that Elop will remain on till 5 December....wonder if he'll make MAX?
What's the consensus on this? Adobe cleaning house? or does Elop have something else up his sleeve? Maybe he's going to join Jeremy Allaire at Brightcove?
Save the date! October 23-26, 2006! Las Vegas, Nevada! MAX 2006!
This will be the first MAX since the merger. Adobe folks were present last year (remember the guys in the suits?) but couldn't really say too much since the merger had yet to close. This year, we'll get the full treatment: Adobe goodness on top of all that Macromedia richness. Sometimes MAX is a bit of a cheer-fest, preaching to the choir, but just having all those designers and developers in one place is always inspirational. So mark the date, keep checking the site, or sign up for the emails. More info will surely be coming soon!
Apollo, the code-name for Adobe's Universal Client, is stating to pick-up steam it seems. I'm sure that the folks over at Adobe have been working their butts off on it, but few details have been forthcoming. In the last month though, that's beginning to change. A big article on c|net, "Flash to jump beyond the browser," in early May really gave the best overview so far. More recently, John Dowdell pointed out an article from PDFZone on a preso at PDF2006 that speaks to the document community's thoughts on such a client. And just yesterday, I saw that Mike Chambers will be offering a workshop at September's Flashforward conference called, "Building Your First Apollo Application."
Macromedia Central was a really interesting move outside the browser, but Apollo is shaping up to be in a totally different sphere, not just outside of the browser, but across devices. I just hope that Adobe keeps it svelte so that it moves seamlessly across those devices and isn't so bloated that its actual uses are limited.
If you missed the MAX 2005 presentation about the potentials of Apollo, check it out here (Day 1, "Experience Vision" segment).
I've been thinking about the brouhaha a couple of weeks ago concerning Adobe's moves to protect their trademark of the Flash name. Geoff Stearns had to rename his FlashObject among other changes around. Maybe minor. After all, a rose by any other name...you get the point...but I'm wondering exactly where the dilution of Adobe trademarks really plays out? Is it with the developers that use the authoring tools and the technology? or is it with the client that we build things for? or is it with the end consumer of the things we all build?
I think we developers are fairly savvy about the tools we use. So I'm not worried to much about us. The biggest problem here is that the word "flash" is so generic that without qualification (e.g. "Macromedia Flash"), you're just as likely to get an exhibitionist site in a web search as a useful development site!
Last week, Robert Cringely posted an interesting story (one that
I will emphasize right here and now is complete an utter speculation: nothing, I repeat, nothing you read here
is grounded in fact, so don't go throwing yourself out a window or buying Adobe/Apple stock by the handfuls based on
this...depending on how you feel about it...) suggesting Apple's near-future business strategy. With release of the Boot Camp Public Beta, you can now run Windows on an
Intel-based Macintosh.
Cringely analyzes how this positions Apple to confront Microsoft in a much bigger
way than it has in years. Mostly, he spends the article discussing how Apple can compete with MS Office (pointing out
Apple's support of Open XML as a
document standard as a savvy move in the right direction), but toward the bottom of the page, he also points out
Apple's reliance on Adobe as a major developer of applications for their OS. To alleviate this dependence and ensure
continued dominance (though I think I would question the dominance at this point in time myself) in the graphics
market, Cringely suggests that Apple just buy Adobe!
I wonder why Cringely didn't make a
little more out of Adobe's document business as a potential competitor for Office in and of itself. It seems like the
whole Acrobat side of things might get Apple a fairly large step of the way toward competing with Microsoft.
Crazier things have happened (who would have thought 18 months ago that Adobe would now own Macromedia?!), I guess.
For the conspiracy theorists out there, Rigel has just enough to get the saliva glands going (the entire Aperture team
laid off?!), but I'm not going to hold my breath here...just keep my eyes open and always look over my shoulder...
Since we've been talking about variousFlash players on the
Playstation Portable, it started me thinking of the proliferation of Flash across various devices. As a certain
do-it-yourself maven might say, this is a "good thing." A great thing really. The more Flash the
better as far as I'm concerned. But we can't really talk about just one Flash anymore. Even though the adoption rate
for the latest Flash player
for your browser has been amazingly quick, we've got all of these other players for different devices, some their own
flavor of Flash (e.g., FlashLite), some just legacy players on devices (PSP case in point). Then there's Zaphod, the
latest beta player (until
recently also called version 8.5, now 9).
I'm a little late on pointing this out, but its worth repeating it here again anyway.
Last week, Adobe released a couple of new templates for your Flash 8
IDE to address the latest changes in how Internet Explorer addresses active content (i.e. Flash). With the latest
update, IE users have to actively allow your Flash movie to play. The Flash Active Content Update
Extension will help in building new sites that avoid this problem.
If you're looking for help in
adjusting existing HTML pages, check out the Active Content Developer Center. And for information on the problem from the browser side of
things, check here.
Clive
Whitear over at Adobe Consulting's Work in Progress
blog just posted a really nice Transition and Tween Explorer. Not the prettiest app you'll ever see, but really
functional. Great way to learn some Actionscripting as well if you're new to the whole coding aspect of things. Have
fun playing with the effects, then cut and paste the code into your own files! Download the files
here!
Adobe should build this into future Flash UIs, similar to the filter explorer in Photoshop.
Fresh out of the oven! Bill Perry just posted a link on
his blog for the new Flash Player 7
for Pocket PC. Windows Mobile 5 and PPC 2003 compatible (remember last fall when Macromedia removed the FP6 for PPC
because of stability issues?). Bill lays out the key features as:
Last week, we all heard of the security risk posed by the current Flash player and I'm sure
you all already updated your web players. Mike Downey points out
that there are also updates for
the Flash 8 and Flash MX 2004 Test Movie players as well. So start your morning off right by patching away!
Jan Kabili of our blog sibling, The Unofficial Photoshop Weblog, pointed out another good John Nack post
earlier this week. Adobe is looking for commentary from bloggers and web designers on ways to improve Fireworks for its
future integration into Photoshop and the Adobe Creative Suite of applications. I would like Fireworks to continue on
its current 8 path of integration with Flash and possibly replace ImageReady as Adobe's web image creator. I could even
see them integrating Fireworks into the consumer level Adboe products (like the gallery applications) as a way to easily
add home made graphics to original images and create easy web pages for the budding amature web designer.
Our
blog brother in design, The
Unofficial Photoshop Weblog has the low down on the John Nack interview by Inside Mac (download via
iTunes). The interview has lots of info on all things Flash and Adobe, including the Flash-Photoshop integration
and the future of the Mac Universal Binaries of Adobe products. Be sure to download the latest and listen to it
yourself.
Wow that sounds ominous doesn't it... Actually I just
want to direct you a an interview Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen did with University of Pennsylvania's Knowledge@Wharton a
short while ago. They asked him all the important questions including how the Macromedia acquisition is going to change
Adobe's future and ways Adobe will be able to use its new found control of Flash. They get into a discussion of the
newly re-named engagement platform. You can either read the article at the link or download it for later listening.
Today is Flash's 10th birthday! From 1996's FutureSplash Animator to today's Flash 8...we've come a long way baby! It's been a great ride and there's no end in sight!
Jan Kabili of our blog sibling, 
Our
blog brother in design, 
Wow that sounds ominous doesn't it... Actually I just
want to direct you a an interview Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen did with University of Pennsylvania's Knowledge@Wharton a
short while ago. They asked him all the important questions including how the Macromedia acquisition is going to change
Adobe's future and ways Adobe will be able to use its new found control of Flash. They get into a discussion of the
newly re-named engagement platform. You can either read the article at the link or download it for later listening.
